


If You (Asked Me, I Wouldn't) Walk Away

by ThoughtfulConstellations



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, New Avengers (Comics), Spider-Woman (Comic), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Hospitals, Post-Hawkeye #15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2015-02-01
Packaged: 2018-03-10 00:36:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3270167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThoughtfulConstellations/pseuds/ThoughtfulConstellations
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jess visits Clint in the hospital while he's unconscious, and she comes to terms with several realizations about herself, Clint, and her relationship with him.  Post-Hawkeye #15.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You (Asked Me, I Wouldn't) Walk Away

**Author's Note:**

> I'm kind of closeted Clintjess trash, but I guess now that I've written a thing for them, it's no longer so secret.
> 
> As always, feedback is appreciated!
> 
> Enjoy! =)

Jess feels like a bitch.

Correction: Jess _is_ a bitch.

 _Jessica Miriam Drew, you are a bitch_ , the dark-haired superhero thinks to herself.  She looks around the tiny hospital room for a few seconds before her vibrant green eyes land back on Clint.  She’s been going back and forth between staring at him and then looking everywhere _but_ him; in all honesty, she doesn’t know what the proper conduct is in situations like these, so she doesn’t know how to act.

She’d watched him get stabbed for fuck’s sake.  She’d stood by and watched as Barney had received a shot to the gut and Clint had had arrows shoved through his ears.  God, she’d been there and watched these things happen, and she hadn’t been able to do a damn thing.  _Some superhero you are…some kind of Avenger_ , she bitterly tells herself.  All she’d been able to do was stand still in shock for several moments before realizing that she should call 911 or—or do _something_.

Clint doesn’t look like himself.  Granted, he always looks injured to some degree, but today is the first day that Jess can say he’s looked hurt—as in _bad_ hurt. For someone so tall and solid, he looks small and pale in the bed.  He looks like he’s been through hell and back, and quite honestly, that’s exactly what’s happened to him today.  The irony doesn’t escape Jess; his beloved arrows were what did this to him. Technically, she knows that it wasn’t the arrows that did it.  It was that jackass clown guy whoever the hell he is, but still: the irony is there.

She glances across the room to look at Natasha, who’s come out of hiding for the moment to make her appearance.  Natasha doesn’t look as worried as Jess feels, but then again, this is Natasha. Natasha is always less worried about everything, or at least she _looks_ less worried.  Jess knows the redheaded Avenger enough to know that Natasha practically defined the phrase “looks can be deceiving.”

Natasha lifts her own green eyes from Clint’s unconscious figure, and she meets Jess’s eyes. “He’ll pull through.  He always does.”

“You sound so confident,” Jess mumbles.

“Because I know he’ll get through this.  It’s Clint.  It’ll take more than two arrows to the ears to take him down.” Natasha sounds so self-assured that it almost makes Jess feel confident, too.  But then she looks back at Clint and loses what little confidence Natasha had just given her.

“He’s never been this bad off before, though,” Jess replies in a soft voice. Natasha gives a conceding shrug, and she leans back in her chair.  She looks calm on the outside, but Jess knows that something’s going on with her. Natasha’s trying to act like she’s not on the lookout; she’s doing all the things she does on missions, and if Jess were anyone else, she wouldn’t notice.  But she’s Jess, and she knows Natasha, so she does notice. “You don’t have to stay.”

“I want to,” Natasha answers, and Jess believes her. “You don’t have to stay, either, you know.”

“I _feel_ like I do.” Jess props her chin up in her hands, and she leans her elbow against the arm of her chair. “I feel like shit.”

“Don’t do that thing where you beat yourself up.”

“I’m doing that thing.”

“Why? Because you broke up with him because he cheated on you?”

“Did he ever cheat on _you?_ ” Jess redirects her gaze towards Natasha, curiously waiting for an answer, but when she sees Natasha’s hesitant look, she has her answer.  Sighing, she allows herself to sag even more in her chair. “Thought not.”

“I won’t make excuses for him.” Natasha mirrors Jess’s actions of putting her chin in her hand, but she does it with her left hand instead of her right like Jess is doing. “He’s complicated.”

“He’s Clint.”

“If we were a movie, we’d fail the Bechdel Test.”

Finally, Jess smiles, and she feels a tiny bit of tension drain from her shoulders. “Some feminists we are.”

“You’re not obligated to forgive him,” Natasha points out. Jess pauses as she thinks that over. Natasha’s so much more emotionally detached than she is.  Well. That’s not entirely true. Jess knows that it isn’t fair to think such things about Natasha, who’s one of her close friends. She knows that Natasha is a mystery and a contradiction all at the same time, and for whatever reason, she finds comfort in that fact.  Natasha might not always be reliable for everything, but Jess never doubts that she will always be able to count on Natasha to be those two very things.

“I know,” she slowly replies. “But I feel like shit. I nearly saw him die today, and all it did was make me angrier that he almost died without—without—I don’t even know.”

“Huh. We’d _really_ fail the Bechdel Test,” Natasha remarks, more to herself than to Jess. Jess smirks and rolls her eyes. If Natasha were anyone else in the entire world, Jess would probably be annoyed with her just then, but since Natasha’s Natasha, Jess can’t find it in herself to actually be annoyed with the spy.

“Ever going to tell me who you’re hiding from?” Jess asks.

“Hmmm?” Natasha asks innocently.  And Jess is a good friend.  She knows not to push it.  So she doesn’t.

“Nothing,” she replies. “Never mind.”

* * *

 

Even after Natasha leaves, Jess stays by Clint.  She doesn’t know what to expect when he wakes up. The doctors said that he would be pretty damn out of it as a result of both the painkillers and the physical trauma he’s just been through.  Hell, she doesn’t even know if this is her place to be here.  She’s not his girlfriend, at least not anymore.  Though had she ever been his girlfriend?  They’ve always avoided putting a label on it, but now that Jess thinks about it, she isn’t sure if avoiding a label was a purposeful move or not.

Jess would be lying if she said that she’s never thought about him as her boyfriend.  As much as she can stumble about and lie to Natasha and Carol and basically everyone else while saying that she and Clint are a casual thing, their relationship has never been all that casual for her.  Actually, even _that_ statement is false, she realizes.  Whatever she’s had with Clint has been casual, but it’s also been serious in a way she’s never expected. She’s come to rely on it, and that fact is probably the worst one of them all.  After everything she’s been through in her life, she hates relying on anything, whether it’s people or objects.  So to admit that she’s come to rely on this thing with Clint is like a punch to the gut.

She wonders if Natasha thinks she’s stupid for staying here with Clint. Clint cheating on Jess was shitty, and Natasha owns up to that; Jesus, Natasha’s been the one this entire time telling her that she needs to either force Clint to talk about his feelings for her or to let him go.

“If you let him keep going on like this, he’ll keep going on like this,” Natasha had once told her, and even though Natasha had been right—like always, goddamn her—Jess hadn’t pursued any kind of conversation with Clint either way.

“It’s not that big of a deal,” Jess had replied, but she’d been lying. She usually lies when it comes to Clint. She lies to everyone else about him, but she can’t quite make herself lie to his face.  When he looks at her with those damn clear blue eyes of his, she can’t find it in herself to tell him to shape up or ship out because she’s done. Because she’s _not_ done.  She’d like to be done, but she’s not.

 _Get yourself together, Jess_ , she mentally tells herself.  _Now isn’t the time to have an identity crisis._

But if any time is the time, now is the time.  With Clint lying unconscious and quite possibly not 100% out of the woods, now is the time for her to have an identity crisis because unfortunately, she’s invested far too much of herself in him, and she hates that about herself.  She’s come to rely on him.

Jess hates herself for a lot of reasons right now, but she has to say that she hates herself most of all for hitting Clint.  She doesn’t know everything about his childhood, but she knows he didn’t have a happy one.  She knows that his dad beat up on him when he was little, but beyond that, she knows nothing. Whenever she thinks back to the moment she’d slapped him, she feels a little part of herself die. Hitting is for the enemy—as much of a shitty person as Clint can be sometimes, he’s not the enemy. He never has been.

She looks at him as he lies still and white on the hospital bed, and she tries to think of 100 different ways to tell him she’s sorry. Saying sorry has never been her strongest suit, but suddenly, that’s what she wants to do more than anything else. And yet the words don’t seem to come to her.  All she can do is sit still and hope that maybe Clint will apologize to her first. If he wakes up. If he’s ok.  If he survives.

Frustrated, she lets out a loud sigh and leans back too forcefully in her chair. The chair’s joints creak, and she half-winces at the realization that she almost broke the damn thing, but she doesn’t feel all that bad at all.  She’s supposed to be thinking positively, and here she is thinking that maybe Clint won’t make it out of this thing.  Natasha’s words from earlier ring back through her head, and she reminds herself that Natasha’s right.  Goddammit, Natasha’s always right, so if Natasha told her that Clint will pull through this the way he pulls through everything else, then she’s _right_.

Jess has also come to rely on Natasha, but she doesn’t hate that bit of dependence as much as she hates whatever amount of reliance she feels towards Clint. Friendship is different from the kind of relationship she has with him.  If it can be called a relationship.

Clint hasn’t moved once since the doctors told her she could come in and sit with him.  He’s usually so restless whenever he sleeps—he can’t lie still for too long.  That part of him is something Jess isn’t terribly fond of because it often keeps her up at night.  Normally, she tries not to make it a habit to stay the night with him, but whenever she does, she winds up regretting it because he tosses and turns all while he sleeps.  She hates it, and yet she can’t seem to say no whenever he suggests to her that she should stay.

If Clint wants her to stay, she’ll always stay.

She wonders if he wants her to stay now.  They’re not sleeping together anymore.  They’re not dating.  The last time they’d spoken, she’d been mad at him for trying to fix all of this on his own.  Running a hand over her dry, scratchy eyes, Jess suppresses her sigh.  Jesus…the last time she’d spoken to him, she’d been mad. She’d been mad, and he’d run off to the roof, and when she’d gone after him, she’d watched him get stabbed through the ears.  No matter how hard she tries, she can’t erase the image of him lying curled up on the ground with blood pouring out of him out of her brain.  All that blood staining his lovely light blond hair.  Now his hair has been mostly wrapped up in bandages. Bandages cover his ears and his head, and he’s still asleep.

 _Do you want me to stay, Clint?_ she silently asks. _If I’m here when you wake up, will you want me to leave?  I’m sorry I hit you, Clint.  I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for you and for me and this entire mess of a relationship I’m sorry I never told you I wanted more.  I’m sorry I couldn’t admit it to myself.  I’m sorry I’m about to leave you._

When she stands up, she thinks about putting her hand on his hair—she’s always loved his hair like corn silk, so light and soft.  She’s spent many nights running her fingers through his hair over and over while he curled up to her like a little kid, quietly sighing at how good it felt.  God, she loves his hair. She crosses towards the bed to touch him, to let him know that she’s there, but once she’s standing beside him and looking down, she can’t bring herself to do it.

He doesn’t love her.  He never has. Jess can convince herself that he cares about her because she knows he’s not cruel by instinct. He just does things and doesn’t think about them.  He cares, if nothing else. And maybe if she forces herself to admit something, she doesn’t love him, either.  But when she’s looking at him like this, and he’s not looking at her, it’s pretty hard to convince herself that she doesn’t.

So she doesn’t try to.  Instead, she turns over her shoulder and quietly slips away.  She’ll never know if Clint wants her to stay, and honestly, she’s glad that she doesn’t know.  Some things are best left unknown, and this is one of them.  As she walks off, only one thought flashes through her mind.

_I’m sorry for everything._


End file.
